Computing solutions or applications (e.g., business applications such as SAP Enterprise Portal, SAP ERP, etc.) are commonly installed on host computer systems. Each host computer system's infrastructure may consist of one or more physical machines, virtual machines, central processing units, disk drives and other resources, distributed over diverse locations or nodes connected by a network.
To ensure reliable availability of the computing solutions to users, the host computer systems may be deployed in adaptive environments. Further, critical solutions may be hosted on load-balancing computer clusters (i.e. in which cluster-nodes may, for example, share computational workload to provide better overall performance).
In an adaptive environment, hosting of a computing solution or application on a host computer system's infrastructure, which may include several physical computers, can be monitored and managed using vendor provided solutions (e.g., by an “adaptive controller”). The adaptive controllers provide a bridge between infrastructure and instances of the computing solution or application. In case of failure of a component (e.g., hardware failure, network link failure, etc.) in one physical host computer, the managed solution or application may be relocated and restarted on a different physical host computer. The adaptive controller may also relocate a managed solution or application from a host to other physical resources to mitigate high load situations or for maintenance purposes.
Conventional hosting systems in the industry have infrastructure components (e.g., physical computers and other hardware) sourced from specific vendors. Solutions managers or adaptive controller implementations in such hosting systems are customized for the physical computers or hardware provided by the specific vendors. The solutions manager or adaptive controller implementations are usually not transferable from one vendor-type hosting system to another vendor-type hosting system.
Consideration is now being given to solutions managers or adaptive controller configurations that can be interchangeably deployed over diverse types of hosting system infrastructures.